


consummation

by mossy_gremlin



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Dark, Drabble, Gen, Horror, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:06:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26121640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mossy_gremlin/pseuds/mossy_gremlin
Summary: (After all, Uther said, sorcerers did not have dignity or pride or emotion. They had to be laid bare, to shed their disguises. No better than animals.)A short exploration of the horrors of the persecution of sorcery under Uther's reign. [scrap]
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is from a scrapped fic!! It was meant to have a plot but I don't want to write it anymore.

Merlin had always liked the smell of spring. It was the kind of sweetness that you hardly noticed until you missed it, when the winter frosts started to freeze their way in and fill each breath with ice and darkness. Spring was the air bursting with the song of birds, the grass brighter than you remembered it being under the frost. He was always glad for the season and the change it brought. But the air was different today.

The scent was overpowering, the kind of sickly sweet that clawed its way through your nose and stuck in your throat and made you feel like you could not breathe.

Below, dark smoke billowed from the pyre. The flames roared with dark fury, licking up the base of the wood and devouring everything in its way. A man was strapped to the wooden stake, eyes wide in terror, hands and legs bound in knots of thick rope, stripped down to nothing. (A final humiliation. Uther, even now, was not content with his own cruelty. For in Uther’s kingdom, the final price of defiance was not just your life, but your dignity. After all, Uther said, sorcerers did not have dignity or pride or emotion. They had to be laid bare, to shed their disguises. No better than animals.)

(What a waste of meat.)

The air was sweet and hot and saturated with the stench of burning. The aftertaste of fire and ash burned in the back of Merlin’s throat for hours after the pyre was cleared, making him sick, and he could feel the phantom heat scorching his skin as he laid in bed that night. He tossed and turned and stripped off all his clothes, suffocated with heat, too hot, too hot, until he fell to his knees and retched over the chamberpot.

The scent in his clothes lingered much longer than a few hours.

He washed them until his hands were numb, tunic, scarf, breeches and all, spent hours scrubbing, and then he washed them again. He wanted to unravel them, seam by seam, and pluck the invisible specks of ash out from between the fibres. Hands bloody, throat sore from lack of speaking. (There were no words for this.) Still, the scent clung to him like guilt.

Arthur didn’t notice.

He never did.

**


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn’t always burning. Pyres took work, took hours to set up and then dismantle. They filled the air with ash and smoke and a terrible reminder that lingered as quiet as a ghost. The remainders had to swept up, disposed of methodically, before the wind could set it blowing about the courtyard.

Often Uther didn’t bother, didn’t feel it was necessary to make another example. So many had already been made, after all. So many ashes carried off with the wind, set free from their funereal mound of fire; so much blood already soaked deep into the soil, chopping blocks, the dark, hidden corners of things, all flowing like a river back onto Uther’s hands.

No, it wasn’t always burning. (Still, there was something about it. Nothing could ever quite match the savage, cruel beauty of the flames, flaring hot and white and rising with no end.)


End file.
